Productivity Programme Better for less Guide to support The challenges facing local government are well known. Funding has fallen significantly over the current spending review period; demand for key services continues to rise; and residents rightly retain high expectations about the quality of services they receive, with an increasing appetite for personalised services. Councils must balance differing objectives such as increased choice and diversified provision with the need to deliver major budget savings.

There is huge pressure on councils to deliver better for less; to maximise the value of every pound that they spend; and to think hard about whether existing ways of working remain the best approaches to delivering the services that local people want.

In that context, I am delighted to introduce this summary of the LGA’s productivity programme. Councils have led the rest of the public sector in becoming more efficient, but more needs to be done. The LGA has an important role to play in supporting councils to become more productive, as part of our overall ‘Taking the lead’ offer. We have focussed on critical high spend areas such as children’s, adults and families, procurement and capital assets. Additionally, the programme will also support councils as they explore radical new ways of working, and respond to the opportunities created by the Localism Bill and Open Public Services White Paper.

The programme aims to provide practical support to councils as they grapple with the challenges local government faces to deliver better for less. We will do this through:

- undertaking analysis and research on behalf of the sector
- sharing lessons learnt and best practice across authorities
- developing new tools and materials to support local authorities
- providing direct support to individual authorities via a range of programme initiatives.

I encourage all authorities to make use of the programme in a way that best suits their needs.

Councillor Peter Fleming Chairman of the LGA Improvement Board and Leader of Sevenoaks District Council The productivity programme aims to help councils deliver better for less, by supporting them to become more productive in high spend areas and working with authorities to explore the future ways of working required to meet the challenge of significant budget cuts.

Procurement and capital assets

Over 50 per cent of council spending is on goods and services bought from the private, voluntary and community sectors, whilst billions of pounds are tied up in land and property value. Councils are already working together to procure at regional and sub-regional levels through consortia, and using approaches that drive down costs, such as e-auctions. But there is more that can be done to drive out further savings; and councils need to adapt to take account of issues such as outcome based commissioning / payment by results; diversified provider bases (including mutuals, social enterprises and micro-providers) and supporting local small and medium enterprises.

The productivity programme is developing a National Procurement Strategy for local government – with the support of two advisory groups we have established – to provide a national strategic and operational steer on procurement issues. We are working with the sector to develop a business case for the procurement of goods and services at a national level. We are also continuing to encourage, support and develop the appropriate mechanisms to achieve good procurement; this includes guidelines to help councils apply EU procurement regulations to support their local communities as well as deliver the economies of scale that effective procurement can bring.

We will be providing seed funding to support councils and their partners specifically in their work to further develop a category management approach to help drive greater efficiency savings.

We are directly supporting 15 Wave 2 Capital and Asset Pathfinder Councils (which together with Wave 1 now account for over a third of the country) to make better use of public land and property through working across all public agencies in their area to integrate services and rationalise use. Savings of over 20% in property running costs and 50% savings in carbon footprint have been identified since the Capital and Assets Pathfinders were launched in 2010.

Additionally, as part of the procurement workstream we are developing a waste innovation programme to research and pilot innovative approaches to reducing waste collection costs. The programme will work with a pilot area over a year long period to assess the impact of food waste digesters on total waste collection and costs. Children, adults and families

Children’s services and adult social care protect some of the most vulnerable members of our society, and are the largest area of controllable spend for most upper tier authorities. The productivity programme is working alongside the sector led improvement boards in adults and children’s services to support councils to increase productivity at the same time as improving council’s ability to protect the people who use these services.

We have developed an adult social care efficiency programme to support councils as they develop the wide ranging efficiency approaches required to meet the challenges of budget cuts, demographic pressures and personalisation. (www.local.gov.uk/adult-social-care-efficiency). The programme will provide grants to authorities to fund an external efficiency/transformation diagnostic that helps challenge and refine their existing savings plans and transformation strategies. Authorities will subsequently work with suppliers on a risk/reward basis over 12-24 months to implement the findings from the diagnostic and deliver the savings identified. We will use the learning from the programme for the benefit of the wider sector through identifying common themes, tools and approaches for the benefit of all authorities.

In children’s services, the productivity programme is managing the commissioning and productivity work of the Children’s Improvement Board. Our focus is on developing an enabling and sustainable model for self-support on commissioning and productivity at both a national and local level, building on existing networks to develop and share good practice and learning. Hands on support to deliver improvements will be available in the form of external experts and sector specialists bringing experience and knowledge of both children’s services and commissioning and productivity. Additionally, new tools and materials will be developed to provide support in tackling the difficult challenges facing those working to improve outcomes for children, young people and families. This is likely to include work on special educational needs (SEN), youth services, placements and prevention/early intervention. Future ways of working

Local government is innovative and willing to try new approaches; councils have hit the headlines as they have developed the ‘Easy council’ or ‘John Lewis council.’ We are working with authorities to identify the new models of working that enable them to deliver better for less, and helping others to understand the implications and practicalities of radical new models of service delivery, including local authority trading vehicles, mutuals and social enterprises. Linked to this, we are also supporting the development of innovative approaches to different services through supporting applicants to the LGA / NESTA Creative Councils programme. We will share the learning from these new ways or working across the rest of the sector.

The programme has collected an extensive bank of tried and tested best practice from councils that have already innovated. We will share the experience and lessons learnt of authorities that have implemented approaches such as shared services to help other councils consider and embed these approaches. Our analysis will help to identify the critical success factors and challenges councils need to be aware of before embarking on this route, in order to help them reach successful conclusions.

A comprehensive shared services database and map highlighting leading practice and the efficiency savings being delivered will also point authorities in the right direction.

The programme will directly support councils through a series of productivity master classes tailored to the needs of individual or groups of authorities (www.local.gov.uk/big-win-future-ways-of-working). The master classes will assist with, stimulate and challenge productivity approaches in line with the specific requirements of authorities.

Additionally, we will fund productivity ‘experts’ (members, officers or private sector representatives with experience in delivering change programmes) to work with a group of councils over a 6-9 month period of time to assist with their productivity issues. These could relate to a single service redesign e.g. adult social care, children’s services, waste, or a council wide transformation programme. Contacts

For further information, please contact:

productivity@local.gov.uk